The dark tower volume 8
by reborndrakken
Summary: This is the first page of my idea of what volume 8 may be like. if peeps like it i will add more. Obviously it borrows heavily from volume 1 with changes here and there. I have included the resumption piece from the end of the dark tower volume 7 as 8 will be influenced by it. hope its a good read


THE DARK TOWER volume viii

The Horn Of Arthur Eld

Resumption

The gunslinger paused for a moment, swaying on his feet. He thought he'd almost passed out. It was the heat, of course; the damned heat. There was a wind, but it was dry and brought no relief. He took out his waterskin, judged how much was left by the heft of it, knew he shouldn't drink - it wasn't time to drink - and had a swallow anyway.

For a moment he felt he was somewhere else, in the Tower its self mayhap. But of course the desert was tricky and full of mirages. The Dark Tower still lay thousands of wheels ahead. That sense of having climbed many stairs and looked in many rooms where many face had looked back at him was already fading.

_ I will reach it, _he thought, squinting up at the pitiless sun. _I swear on the name of my father that I will._

_ And perhaps this time if you get there it will be different, _a voice whispered - surely the voice of desert delirium, for what other time had there ever been? He was what he and was and where he was , just that, no more than that, no more. He had no sense of humour and little imagination, but he was stead-fast, He was a Gunslinger. And in his heart, well-hidden, he still felt a bitter romance for the quest.

_ You're the one who never changes, _Cort he told him once, and in his voice Roland could of sworn he heard fear….although why Cort should have been afraid of him - a boy - Roland couldn't tell. _it'll br your damnation, boy. you'll wear out a hundred pairs of boots on your walk to hell._

And Vanny: _Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it._

And his mother: _Roland, must you always be so serious? Can you never rest?_

Yet the voice whispered it again

( _different this time mayhap, different )_

and Roland did seem to smell something other than alkali and devil-grass. He thought it might be flowers.

He thought it might be roses.

He shifted his gunna from one shoulder to the other, then touched the horn that rode on his belt behind the gun on his right hip. The ancient brass horn, had once been blown by Arthur Eld himself, or so the story did say. Roland had given it to Cuthbert Allgood at Jericho Hill, and when Cuthbert fell, Roland paused just long enough to pick it up again, knocking the deathdust of that place from its throat.

_ This is your sigul, _whispered the fading voice that bore with it the dusk - sweet scent of roses, the scent of home on a summer evening - o lost! - a stone, a rose, an unfound door; a stone, a rose, a door.

_ This is the promise that things may be different, Roland - that there may yet be rest. Even salvation._

A pause, and then:

_ If you stand. If you are true._

He shook his head to clear it, thought of taking another sip of water, and dismissed the idea. Tonight. When he built his campfire over the bones of Walter's fire. Then he would drink, as for now…

As for now he would resume his journey, somewhere ahead was the Dark Tower, closer however, much closer was the man ( _was_ he a man? Was he really? ) who could perhaps tell him how to get there. Roland would catch him, and when he did that man would talk - aye, yes, yar, tell it on the mountain as you'd hear it in the valley; Walter would be caught and Walter would talk.

Roland touched the horn again, and its reality was oddly comforting, as if he had never touched it before.

_ Time to get moving _

The man in black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed.

Chapter one

The desert was the apotheosis of all desert, huge, standing to the sky for what looked like an eternity in all directions. It was white and blinding and waterless and without feature save the faint cloudy haze of the mountains which sketched themselves on the horizon and the devil-grass which brought sweet dreams, nightmares, death. An occasional tombstone sign pointed the way, for once the drifted track that cut its way through the thick crust of alkali had been a highway. Coaches and buckas had followed it. The world had moved on since then. The world had emptied.

The Gunslinger had been struck by momentary dizziness earlier, but that was now well passed. Fading memories of the smell of roses and a whisper that carried them. Roland grasped the horn at his hip, and felt steadied by it.

He passed the miles stolidly, not hurrying, not loafing.

He breasted a gently rising dune, and saw the kicked remains of a tiny campfire on the lee side, the side the sun would quit earliest. Small signs like this, once more affirming the man in blacks possible humanity, never failed to please him.

His quarry had burned the devil-grass, of course, as it was the only thing here that would burn. It burned with a greasy, flat light, and it burned slow. Border dwellers had told him that devils lived in the flames. They burned it but would not look into the light. They said the devils hypnotized, beckoned, would eventually draw the one who looked into the flames. And the next man foolish enough to look into the flames might see you.

The Gunslinger had followed the man in black across the desert for two months now, across the endless, screamingly monotonous purgatorial wastes, and had yet to find spoor other than the hygienic sterile ideographs of the man in blacks campfires.

Perhaps the campfires were a message, spelled out in one great letter at a time. _Keep your distance, _it might say. Or, _the end draweth nigh. _Or even, _come and get me. _He had no interest in messages, if messages they were. What mattered was that these remains were as cold as the rest, and yet he had gained. He knew he was closer, but did not know how he knew. A kind of smell, perhaps. That didn't matter either. He would keep going until something changed, and if nothing changed, he would keep going anyway. There would be water if god willed it, the old timers say, water if god willed it, even in the desert.

He sat down and allowed himself a pull from his water bag. He thought of the momentary dizziness earlier in the day, his hand rested on the horn of eld, and at first again he felt steadied, he thought he could smell flowers. The scent of roses. The steadiness did not last, and soon the world seemed to spin around had lost the horn at the battle of Jericho Hill along with Cuthbert, hadn't he? For a moment the thought was inescapable. _Of course I didn't lose the horn, here it is, but I did lose it, didn't I? _Thoughts continued to swirl in Rolands head.

_You lost it. _

_I didn't._

_You did lose it, when Cuthbert lost his life at Jericho Hill._

_But its here, I see it with my own eyes, feel it in my hands, its weight , its age._

_It wasn't here last time, was it Gunslinger ( You're the one who never changes )_


End file.
